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DAILY ALERT
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Sunday, October 5, 2025 | ||
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In-Depth Issues:
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We wish our readers a Happy Sukkot holiday!
Daily Alert will not appear on Tuesday, October 7 News Resources - North America, Europe, and Asia:
After nearly five days, Hamas responded to President Trump's proposal to end the war in Gaza. Yet its response stopped well short of endorsing the plan, including critical issues like the demand that Hamas disarm and destroy their weapons, and that it play no role in governing Gaza in the future. Trump posted on Truth Social: "Based on the Statement just issued by Hamas, I believe they are ready for a lasting PEACE. Israel must immediately stop the bombing of Gaza, so that we can get the Hostages out safely and quickly!" It was the first time Trump has explicitly told Israel to halt its assault on Gaza. (CNN) See also Senior Israeli Official: Hamas Has Agreed to Release All Hostages - Itamar Eichner A senior Israeli official said Saturday that under the emerging plan, Israel will receive all 48 hostages, including one female captive, within 72 hours of an agreement's approval. "We're talking about just a few days of negotiations," he said. At this stage, there is a "reduction in fire," intended to give Hamas space to locate and return hostages. "Hamas has agreed to the first phase - releasing all hostages - and that's a major achievement for Israel," the official said. The upcoming Cairo talks, due to begin on Monday, will determine the logistics of releasing live hostages and the time frame Hamas will receive to collect the bodies of the dead, he added. (Ynet News) See also Israel Halts Offensive Operations in Gaza to Support Hostage Negotiations - Yoav Zitun (Ynet News) On Friday, Hamas said it was willing to release hostages and hand over Gaza. But Hamas used hedged language that some observers saw as problematic to clinching a final peace. While Arab mediators said Khalil Al-Hayya, Hamas's top negotiator, and several other senior political officials support accepting the U.S. proposal despite significant reservations, they have limited sway over the group's armed wing in Gaza. Mediators said Hamas leader in Gaza Ezzedin al-Haddad is willing to give up rockets and other offensive weapons to Egypt and the UN for storage, but he wants to retain small arms such as assault rifles. Moreover, Hamas commanders inside Gaza say they won't be able to enforce compliance with disarmament demands among fighters if they accept a deal that amounts to surrender. Mediators warn that some Hamas fighters could defect to other Palestinian militant groups such as Palestinian Islamic Jihad, leaving uncertainty over whether a deal with Hamas alone could halt the fighting. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) called Hamas's response "a classic 'Yes, but.' No disarmament, keeping Gaza under Palestinian control, and tying hostage release to negotiations, along with other problems. This is, in essence, a rejection by Hamas of President Trump's 'take it or leave it' proposal." (Wall Street Journal) During the Yom Kippur service at Heaton Park synagogue in Manchester on Thursday morning, a car driven at speed plowed into people standing outside the synagogue. Then a man wearing all black climbed from the car carrying a knife and began stabbing an already injured security guard. At least six people outside the synagogue were stabbed. Clad in what appeared to be a suicide vest, the shaven-headed, bearded man then made his way towards the entrance of the synagogue. However, quick-thinking members of the congregation managed to lock the doors from the inside. Police shot the man close to the entrance to the building. (Telegraph-UK) See also British Jews Recall "Tsunami of Jew-Hatred" Authorities in Britain identified the Manchester synagogue attacker as Jihad al-Shami, 35, a British citizen of Syrian origin who came to Britain as a child. British media described him as an Islamist. The attack took place in Crumpsall, a small Manchester suburb with both a large Jewish community and a large Muslim community. Witnesses said those stabbed were Jewish men wearing kippot. Jews across the kingdom have long expressed grave concern about a climate of hate they say has been inflamed by anti-Israel activists who have staged frequent, sometimes violent demonstrations since the Gaza war began. Those protests have at times included explicit support for Hamas terrorists or calls for violence. Reuters reported that in Manchester, hours after the attack, two cars drove through the area flying Palestinian flags and several masked men were heard shouting insults at Jews. "Almost every Jew in this country knew this day would come," Rafi Bloom, a member of the Heaton Park synagogue, told Sky News. "We've faced a tsunami of hatred since Oct. 7. Vandalism, physical assaults, online abuse, mistreatment by health workers, students who have been threatened and attacked on campuses. We've had almost weekly hate marches in our streets with disgusting scenes comparing Jews to Nazis...over a conflict 2,000 km. away." (Ynet News) See also Manchester Attacker's Father Praised Oct. 7 Hamas Terrorists - Robert Mendick (Telegraph-UK) Israel's navy has intercepted the boats in an international flotilla bound for Gaza and detained 440 participants, including Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, its Foreign Ministry said Thursday. It said "all the passengers are safe and in good health" and will be deported to Europe. (Washington Post) See also Israel's Peaceful Interception of the Gaza Flotilla - Seth J. Frantzman (Jerusalem Post) News Resources - Israel and the Mideast:
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Saturday evening: "I hope, with G-d's help, that in the coming days, during the Sukkot holiday, I will be able to inform you about the return of all our hostages, both living and deceased, in one phase, while the IDF remains deep within Gaza and in the controlling areas within it." "What brought about the change in Hamas's position is solely the military and diplomatic pressure we have exerted....I have instructed the negotiating team, headed by Minister [Ron] Dermer, to go to Egypt to close the technical details of the release of our hostages. Our intention and that of our American friends is to limit this negotiation to a few days." "In the second stage, Hamas will be disarmed and Gaza demilitarized. This will happen either via a diplomatic route according to the Trump Plan - or via a military route by us." (Prime Minister's Office) Some 20 armed Hamas operatives attempted to attack other Gazans on Friday morning in an Israeli-designated humanitarian zone in the Khan Yunis area. Hossam al-Astal, who leads a group opposed to Hamas, said 11 Hamas operatives were killed and six were seriously wounded in Israeli drone strikes. The IDF released a video showing Hamas operatives dragging children with them, using them as human shields. The gunmen were killed minutes later, without harm to the children. (Times of Israel) Three members of a terrorist cell with suspected links to Hamas were arrested by Germany's domestic intelligence service (BFV), thanks to Mossad intelligence, the Israel Prime Minister's Office announced Friday. The three were found with weapons at the time of their arrest on Wednesday. They intended to initiate terror attacks against Israeli and Jewish targets. "The Mossad will continue to operate everywhere to thwart terrorist activity aimed at harming Israelis and Jews abroad, in full cooperation with security and intelligence agencies in Israel and around the world," the Prime Minister's Office emphasized. (Jerusalem Post) Israeli authorities on Monday prevented what they described as a deliberate attempt by the Palestinian Authority to damage a major archaeological site in the Binyamin region. The operation targeted PA engineering crews who were preparing large-scale infrastructure work at the biblical city of Gibeon. The site, north of Jerusalem, is in Area C, where Israel has both administrative and security jurisdiction. Gibeon is mentioned repeatedly in the Book of Joshua. It is where Joshua made a covenant with the Gibeonites and is the site of the famed battle in which "the sun stood still at Gibeon." Discoveries include a massive pool described in the Book of Samuel, elaborate winery cisterns known as the "Gibeon cisterns," and an underground water system still connected to a functioning spring. Gibeon served as one of the 13 priestly cities in the territory of the tribe of Benjamin and was home to King Saul's family. (TPS-Jerusalem Post) Global Commentary and Think-Tank Analysis:
The Gaza War Hamas is not a pragmatic actor, it is a genocidal terrorist organization. It is not interested in promoting the best interests of the Gazans. Instead, Hamas is driven by an ideology devoted to the supposed divine promise of reward to those who engage in "Jihad." When Hamas launched the October 7 massacre, they knew they would not destroy Israel and that the attack would most probably evoke a harsh Israeli response. That did not interest Hamas. For Hamas, the death and destruction in Gaza is nothing more than the "Price of Jihad," and the very fact that they persist in achieving their goals, despite the losses, is proof of their religious devotion. Surrender, in the eyes of Hamas, is a breach of the religious genocidal belief that has been a guiding principle of the movement since its creation. Moreover, accepting the terms of the latest plan would mean that Hamas would be relinquishing the last stronghold of the Muslim Brotherhood, and that, in the absence of a clear victory, the organization would lose its position in the Palestinian street. Only by understanding what drives Hamas is it possible to understand what could potentially motivate them to accept a deal to end the war. Business concerns, prosperity, and security for Gazans do not entice Hamas. While Israel and the international community see the death of Israelis and Gazans as a tragedy, for Hamas, the death and destruction are a strategy. The writer, former director of the Military Prosecution in Judea and Samaria, is director of the Palestinian Authority Accountability Initiative at the Jerusalem Center. (Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs) President Trump's plan to end the war in Gaza and set durable conditions for peace stands out for its clarity, scope, and grounding in the realities of the conflict. No previous plan has offered so concrete a mechanism for both ending hostilities and preventing the return of Hamas's war-fighting capacity. It offers a genuine path to peace for Palestinians, anchored in tangible steps rather than empty rhetoric. It explicitly addresses the real concerns of the Palestinian people including a credible pathway for governance, and international support for rebuilding Gaza into a place that offers hope rather than despair. Importantly, the Palestinian Authority is excluded until it undergoes meaningful reform, a recognition that failed leadership cannot simply be recycled. This is critical because it links the prospect of legitimate Palestinian self-rule to demonstrated governance reform and abandonment of terrorism. The plan also brings in Arab, Muslim, and international partners. If Hamas accepts the terms, the war ends immediately. If Hamas delays or refuses, the war continues with Israel now having the support and assistance of all those who approved the plan. Moreover, the plan builds in mechanisms for progress in the absence of Hamas's cooperation, making it more resilient than past proposals that depended entirely on Hamas's good faith. The plan requires Gaza to undergo a process of deradicalization. Schools, mosques, and media would need to be stripped of incitement and reoriented toward education, tolerance, and coexistence. Curriculums would be rewritten, foreign-funded extremist networks dismantled, and programs introduced that emphasize economic development, civic responsibility, and peaceful engagement. By linking reconstruction funds and governance reform, the plan ensures that rebuilding Gaza does not simply recreate the previous conditions that allowed Hamas to thrive. At its core, the plan is about breaking the cycle of repeated wars that have defined Gaza for decades. The writer is chair of urban warfare studies at West Point's Modern War Institute. (Jerusalem Post) Trump's plan is not a good deal for Hamas, not least because the organization is required to give up what makes it Hamas - its weapons. Its whole identity has been based on being the "resistance." But there is massive Arab pressure on Hamas to accept a deal. Its endorsement by Qatar and Turkey - countries whose dominant ideological current is the Muslim Brotherhood - leaves Hamas without any Arab backing against Israel - not even from their closest allies. This achievement has succeeded in cornering Hamas. If it says yes, Hamas will essentially no longer be Hamas. If it says no, it will be cast as the greatest obstacle to stopping the war in Gaza. The Hamas leaders in Gaza - Az al-Din Haddad and Raed Saad - are aware that Gaza faces enormous destruction and that hundreds of thousands more will lose their homes, but agreeing to the plan would mean surrender for them. The writer, a veteran Israeli journalist focusing on Palestinian affairs, is one of the creators of the TV series "Fauda." (Ynet News) On Friday evening, Hamas accepted President Trump's peace proposal for ending the war in Gaza with a predictable "Yes, but." In previous attempts to stop the war, Hamas also agreed to a ceasefire in principle but pushed back against specifics. Trump's plan stipulated in no uncertain terms that Hamas must disarm and disband. Hamas has been severely degraded. All of its general and colonel equivalents have been killed. What's left of Hamas does not want to disarm, but Israel will not be able to accept anything less. (Washington Post) President Trump's peace plan to end the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza implicitly proposes Israeli-Palestinian peace on the basis of a two-state compromise. Yet since 1937, the Palestinian leadership has successively rejected numerous international and Israeli peace plans, believing that all of Palestine belongs to the Arabs, and that the Jews have no right to sovereignty in any part of it. Trump's plan is a non-starter because the raison d'etre of Hamas is the destruction of the Jewish state and the Islamization of Palestine (as expounded in the group's foundational Charter of 1988). More importantly, Hamas - like Lebanon's Hizbullah - has from the first said it will never give up its arms. Trump's plan nowhere explains how Hamas will be disarmed or who will do it. Few observers believe that any Arab force will engage in battle against Hamas to disarm it. Any who try to do so will immediately be branded by their own people as "collaborators" with Israel. It is also a matter of "honor," a very important concept in the Arab world; you do not give up your Kalashnikov in the face of a mortal enemy. The writer is professor emeritus of Middle Eastern history at Ben-Gurion University. (Telegraph-UK) IDF forces in Gaza City have been advancing slowly but with overwhelming force, prioritizing security over speed. In practice, it looks similar to operations carried out in Rafah, Khan Yunis, and Beit Hanoun, which have been leveled. A senior officer currently leading the fighting assessed that with the slower, safer approach, the IDF could eliminate all of Hamas's infrastructure in Gaza City within two months. He added that contrary to Hamas's image of fighting to the last man, many operatives have fled with their families to the south. Regarding future security arrangements, commanders in the Gaza Division and Southern Command strongly oppose any plan that leaves the IDF only along the border, without a security perimeter inside Gaza. They warn, "It is impossible to protect communities from the fence. Farmers driving their tractors should not be seeing Hamas fighters but Israeli soldiers in front of them." The commanders also insist on strict enforcement against any violation, preventing the enemy from rebuilding, just as has been done in the north against Hizbullah. Along Israel's northern border there are five outposts inside Lebanese territory. IDF troops conduct raids in Lebanon, uncover large Hizbullah weapons caches, and carry out airstrikes to prevent Hizbullah forces from regrouping. Touring that frontier shows what victory looks like. The IDF now enjoys full freedom of action inside Lebanon. The challenge is to resist international pressure to scale back, because pulling back outposts or reducing offensive operations would bring Hizbullah back to the fence and allow it to rearm. Now, the challenge is to create the same security reality in Gaza's border communities. (Ynet News) On Oct. 7, 2023, more than 400 people were murdered by Hamas terrorists at the Nova Music Festival in Israel. These are some of the stories of those who survived, in interviews by Steven A. Rosenberg, publisher of the Jewish Journal of Greater Boston. (Jewish Journal of Greater Boston) Israel and the West None of the 40 vessels participating in the Global Sumud Flotilla, which Israel intercepted on Yom Kippur, was carrying humanitarian aid, according to the Israeli Foreign Ministry. The ministry also released a video by the Israel Police featuring spokesperson Dean Elsdunne showing the empty interior of one of the flotilla's largest vessels. He points out that the complete lack of aid explains why the organizers refused Israel's offers to hand over the aid. "It was never about bringing aid to Gaza. It was about the headlines and social media," he said. (TPS-Jerusalem Post) Hamas documents discovered in Gaza show a direct link between the flotilla leaders and Hamas. The PCPA (Palestinian Conference for Palestinians Abroad), established in 2018, operates de facto as Hamas's embassies abroad. The organization is responsible for mobilizing actions against Israel on behalf of Hamas, including demonstrations and flotillas to Gaza. Israel designated the PCPA as a terrorist organization in 2021. Saif Abu Kashk, a PCPA operative in Spain, is the CEO of Cyber Neptune, a front company that owns dozens of the ships participating in the latest flotilla. (Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs) The smug sea-farers of the Gaza flotilla pose as peace activists, like Mother Teresa in a keffiyeh. Yet behind the humanitarian pantomime there lurks a brutish neo-colonial urge to rally the mighty nations of the West against the uppity little state of Israel. I don't want anything to happen to the people on these boats. It is not a crime to be an incalculably vain white savior so high on your own sanctimony that you have convinced yourself you can stop a war. Yet if Israel views this flotilla as a problem, can we blame it? It is a rancid double standard so typical of Israelophobia to expect Israel and Israel alone to be chill about such a conceited incursion into its sovereign territory. Israelophobia, the fashionable rage of the activist class, dresses itself up as "anti-war" but it positively pulsates with a warlike loathing for one tiny nation. This isn't peace activism - it's a moralistic crusade fueled by a rank Western chauvinism that views Israel as an uncivilized blot on our planet. (Spiked-UK) Qatar The Wall Street Journal revealed in 2018 that Qatar had targeted 250 influencers to try and sway Trump's policy in their preferred direction. Today there are 788 active Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) registrants in the U.S. Saudi Arabia has 38 total, 15 in D.C. Qatar has 31 total, 22 in D.C. The UAE has 27 total, 11 in D.C. Israel has 16 total, with 8 in D.C. Since 2016, Qatar has spent nearly $250 million on 88 FARA-registered lobbying and PR firms. From 2021-2025, Qatar's agents reported 627 in-person meetings with U.S. political contacts - more than any other country in the world. According to The Free Press, Qatar is the single largest foreign funder of U.S. colleges and universities at $6.3 billion. Six major U.S. universities operate campuses in Qatar. Georgetown University in Washington has received over $1 billion. The Qatari government-run Al Jazeera has unrivaled access on Capitol Hill. Congressman Jack Bergman revealed in 2024 that Al Jazeera and its subsidiaries hold 136 congressional press credentials. The New York Times only has 82. Any honest conversation about foreign influence in Washington has to start with the country that's been pouring billions into U.S. politics, universities, media, and even the capital city itself. That country is Qatar. (Substack) Syria In his speech at the UN General Assembly, Prime Minister Netanyahu referred to ongoing talks regarding a security agreement between Israel and Syria. The international community - led by the U.S. - has embraced Syrian leader Ahmad al-Sharaa, while disregarding the warning signs regarding both the fragility of his rule (he survived an assassination attempt only weeks ago) and his enduring ties to extremist Sunni ideology. Moreover, the Syrian security leadership today is overwhelmingly composed of figures with a jihadist background. Still, an agreement could present an opportunity to improve security realities along the Syrian-Israeli border. Any deal must not tie Israel's hands or prevent it from responding to emerging threats across the border. Israel cannot afford to take risks - not another massacre of Druze civilians, and not a threat to Israeli communities in the Golan Heights. Ignoring the first will only hasten the second. The writer is founder and CEO of the Alma Research and Education Center. (Jerusalem Post) Recognizing a Palestinian State Recognizing a nonexistent Palestinian state will do nothing to promote peace in the region and will instead give a tailwind to the terrorists and Islamic extremists who carried out the Oct. 7 massacre. The takeaway on the Palestinian street will be that a Palestinian state, even a fictitious one, has been delivered not through compromise, change, or negotiation, but through brutal, mind-numbing terrorism. In other words: Terrorism pays. But this is an illusion. Declarations of statehood will not conjure a state into existence if Israel is opposed. Israel controls the territory, and unless it withdraws its troops, no "Palestine" is going to emerge. And Israel is not going to remove its troops - not now nor in the foreseeable future - until there is a fundamental change in Palestinian society. Until the Palestinians accept that the Jewish state is here to stay, that it cannot be wished or fought away, and that their only option is to live beside it rather than in place of it, no progress will be possible. The world should be demanding Palestinian deradicalization - not only in Gaza, where Hamas rules, but also in Judea and Samaria, where support for the Oct. 7 massacre is even higher. Pushing for a two-state solution now is unmoored from reality. The Palestinians have shown no ability or willingness to run a peaceful entity alongside Israel, and Israelis have lost all belief that the Palestinians even want to. Israelis have long soured on the two-state solution because of bitter experience. Time and again, when Israel gave up land, that land was used as a launching pad to attack Israel. (Jerusalem Post) Antisemitism There were two horrifying events in England on Thursday. The first was the murder of two Jews at a synagogue in Manchester. The second were the anti-Israel protests that swept big cities before the bodies of our two Jewish countrymen were even cold. "From the river to the sea!," the Israelophobic mob hollered in the deathly wake of the barbarous assault at Heaton Park. These people desire the violent erasure of the entire Jewish nation. We need to grapple with just how sick it was, how heartless, for mobs in London, Edinburgh and Manchester itself to rain hatred on the Jewish state mere hours after two Jews were murdered. On 4 October 1936, the radical left rallied to the defense of London's Jews from the menace of fascism. They stood with Jewish EastEnders against the threat of Oswald Mosley and his blackshirts. Fast forward 89 years and now the left responds to violent Jew hatred not by siding with Jewish people but by raging against the Jewish nation. They are now on the other side. The orgy of Israelophobia that followed the slaughter at the synagogue made it crystal clear: hatred for the Jewish state is a close cousin of hatred for Jewish people - two frothing ideologies that exist in tandem in modern Britain. Israelophobia is the rotten soil in which Jew hatred festers and grows. And it's time more of us said so. I've never bought into the idea that you can neatly separate the activist class's myopic dread of the Jewish state from the bubbling up in our society of bigotry against the Jewish people. After Manchester I accept it even less. If you spend every hour of every day obsessing over the unconscionable wickedness of the Jewish nation, if you ceaselessly damn Zionism as the cruelest ideology on Earth, then you have no right to come over all coy and shocked when Jews are targeted with violence. Anti-Zionism is antisemitism. After Manchester, I, for one, am devoted to the complete defeat of anti-Zionism. (Spiked-UK) Observations: The Central Obstacle to Peace between Israel and the Palestinians Isn't Politics - Lt.-Col. (res.) Dr. Mordechai Kedar (Mosaic)
The writer, a scholar of Arab culture and public discourse, and an expert on the Muslim Brotherhood, served for 25 years in IDF Military Intelligence. Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs
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